JAMA Performance Improvement: Do No Harm—Taking complications head on to improve the quality of medical care

From the JAMA Network, this is JAMA Performance Improvement: Do No Harm, the podcast about performance improvement and medicine that aims to elevate the quality of care, one patient at a time, with host Ed Livingston, MD.

A resident is asked to remove a drain that was placed in the lumbar space during an operation. Having never seen this sort of drain before not having removed one, the resident proceeded to remove the catheter. Several days later, the patient complained of persistent drainage. An 11-cm segment of retained catheter was removed. This JAMA Performance Improvement article discusses how to avoid this sort of problem as well as how to ensure that resident physicians have sufficient skills to perform procedures on their own. We talk with Drs Cynthia Barnhard, John DeLancey, authors of Retained Lumbar Catheter Tip, and Dr Aaron Reynolds and Dr David Baker.